rd of
measurement between accomplishment and ideal, wherever the material
for such a purpose is available. If folklorists will keep such a
possibility in mind, whenever they are called upon to investigate
myth, it will at all events save them from proceeding upon lines which
cannot lead to progress in the investigation of human history.

The primitive myth does not include all that properly comes within the
definition of myth. There must be included the myth formed to explain
a rite or ceremony, which originating in most ancient times has been
kept up at the instance of a particular religion or cult, but the
meaning and intent of which has been forgotten amidst the progress of
a later civilisation. Pausanias is the great storehouse of such myths
as this, and Mr. Lang has, more than any other scholar, examined and
explained the process which has gone on.

There is also included in this secondary class of myth, the myths upon
which are founded the great systems of mythology. The Hindu mythology,
in spite of all that has been done to place it on the pedestal of
primitive original thought, is definitely relegated to the secondary
position by its best exponents. The Vedic religion is tribal in form,
and in the pre-mythological stage.[205] In the Ramayana and
Mahabharata, on the contrary, "we trace unequivocal indications of a
departure from the elemental worship of the Vedas, and the origin or
elaboration of legends which form the great body of the mythological
religion of the Hindus."[206] The pre-mythological and the
mythological stages of Hindu religion, therefore, are both
discoverable from the traditional literature which has descended from
both ages, and this fact is important in the classification of the
various phases of tradition. When once it is admitted that the
beginnings of mythology are to be traced in one section of the people
who are supposed to derive a common system of mythology from a common
home, future research will hesitate to interpret, as Kuhn and Max
Mueller and their school have done, the traditions of Celts, Teutons,
and Scandinavians as the detritus of ancient mythologies instead of
the beginnings of what, under favourable conditions, might have grown
into mythologies. Mythological tradition is essentially a secondary
not a primary stage. This fact is overlooked by many authorities, and
I have noted some of the unfortunate results. It is not overlooked by
those who study the principles of their